How can I manage separate inventory for the UK and US?

Shopify Discussion
1

Hello, I have a shopify store that sells to both the UK and US under one domain. I can set ‘locations’ for inventory as the US or UK but I can’t find a way to restrict stocks to each country separately. Ie I can’t find a way to input that I’ve run out of one of the products in the UK but still have stock in the US so that a shopper from the UK would see ‘out of stock’ but a shopper in the US would be able to purchase the item.

Any solutions?

2

I checked the documentation for the variant object: https://shopify.dev/api/liquid/objects/variant#variant-inventory_quantity

But I don’t see a way to get inventory at different locations (only variant.inventory_quantity, which would show all inventory combined).

Same for the storefront API: https://shopify.dev/api/storefront/2022-01/objects/ProductVariant#top

In that case you’d have to either use an app or build a custom app that would be able to access the Shopify API, that would allow you the ability to get inventory at each location. Then you would either write some code or use a plugin to detect the user’s location (this could be tricky though, I think since GDPR / CCPA you have to ask for permission to detect location).

This is doable, though I’m not sure the cost of developing and maintaining a custom app would be worth it. If this problem happens often, like daily, then a custom app may be worth it to save you the staff time logged contacting those customers and adjusting the orders.

If it doesn’t happen often enough to build a custom app, then I would consider other points of contact where you can optimize. For example, if a UK customer tries to buy something but it’s out of stock, are they unable to checkout? If yes, then maybe you can adjust the messaging that stops them from checking out. If they are able to check out completely and make the order, then you could use Order Automator app to automatically identify those type of orders and take action on it (like notify support staff so they can contact the customer with an estimation date on when the inventory will be ready, or see if they want to swap for something else).